There are great needs for a portable platform support system designed to provide a stable and safe working platform with variable working heights, especially for working on boats. During the repair or cleanup of a boat superstructure, and particularly during body work such as waxing, it often arises that workers need easy, safe access to the upper part of the boat structure. By way of example, when cleaning a superstructure of a boat, it is often very difficult to clean the top portion of the structure owing to the fact that no convenient platform or other means is available to give the worker proper access. This difficulty can be particularly pronounced in the case of taller boats. In attempting to work on hard-to-reach areas, such as the upper area of the superstructure, workers may cause damage to other portions of the boat or may cause injury to themselves.
Currently, working on the surface of the superstructure of a boat has been done with stepladders and scaffolds. Conventional ladders are of limited utility in boat environments because step ladder rungs will normally be oriented perpendicular to the boat superstructure surface, leading workers to turn their bodies to work on the boat structure while standing on the ladder platform. This will put workers in a very unnatural and unsafe position. Workers can certainly consider employing scaffolding on the deck. However, this method is expensive and is not ideal on a narrow path like the boat deck between the super structure and the boat railing. Due to this narrow deck area between the superstructure and boat railing, some workers resort to suspending themselves from the top of the structure using a rope. These customary methods of working on the high superstructure of boats have been found to be inefficient and unsafe.
There is accordingly a decided need in the art for an improved portable work platform support system especially adapted for use on and around the boat superstructure, which permits easy, safe, and convenient access to all areas of the superstructure while providing a stable work platform.